What's On Today

By KATHRYN SHATTUCK

Published: November 19, 2011

8 P.M. (HBO) THE DILEMMA (2011) Vince Vaughn stars as Ronny, and Kevin James is Nick, best buddies enthralled by beautiful women (Jennifer Connelly and Winona Ryder, above with Mr. James) and business partners who are designing an engine that combines fuel efficiency with muscle-car brawn and noise. But what is Ronny to do when, in the midst of planning the perfect proposal for his girlfriend, he spies Nick's seemingly devoted wife in a lip lock with another man (Channing Tatum)? ''Promotional clips released last year caused some umbrage because they contained homophobic jokes, and those lame gags -- about the somehow nonsexually-specific 'gayness' of electric cars -- are still in the movie, along with the usual exaggerated reassurances that the two main characters, who love each other dearly and whose love is tested by difficult circumstances, are Not Gay,'' A. O. Scott wrote in The New York Times. ''But 'The Dilemma,' written by Allan Loeb and directed by Ron Howard -- hardly a name associated with frat-boy yukfests -- is not entirely what it appears to be. It is less a macho comedy than what you might call a bromantic melodrama, an unabashed weepie with enough beer, sports, fistfights and cars to reassure the snuffling he-men in the audience that their tears are Not ... well, you know.''

10:30 A.M. (13) RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY Bob Faw reports on happiness, and whether people's contentment should be a measurement of a country's standard of living. The Rev. James Martin, the author of ''Between Heaven and Mirth,'' talks about why joy, humor and laughter are essential elements of faith.

NOON (13) RICHARD HEFFNER'S OPEN MIND William J. vanden Heuvel, who founded the Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park, N.Y., to preserve the legacy of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, discusses the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, a monument designed by Louis I. Kahn under construction on the southern tip of Roosevelt Island.

6 P.M. (Hallmark) A CHRISTMAS WEDDING TAIL (2011) Jay Mohr and Nikki Cox lend their voices to Rusty and Cheri, a couple of smitten pooches who convince their owners (Jennie Garth and Brad Rowe) to wed. In ''The Case for Christmas'' (2011), at 8, Dean Cain plays a lawyer and single father hired to represent Santa against a sporting-goods mogul who is suing for irreparable emotional distress because he never received the holiday gifts he wanted as a child.

8 P.M. (Discovery) WALKING THE AMAZON Ed Stafford, right, an explorer and former soldier, and his friend Luke Collyer try to walk the length of the Amazon River, from its source in southern Peru to its mouth on the Brazilian coast -- what they believed would be a 4,000-mile trek taking one year. Two and a half years and 6,000 miles later, only Mr. Stafford had made it to the journey's end, climbing an 18,000-foot mountain, taking part in tribal ceremonies and being mistaken for a human-organ trafficker along the way -- and barely clinging to his sanity.

8 P.M. (Lifetime) JODI PICOULT'S SALEM FALLS (2011) James Van Der Beek plays a beloved teacher and soccer coach at a girls' prep school whose seemingly perfect life is destroyed by a scandal for which he serves eight months in prison. When he takes a job at a diner in a tiny New England town, he slowly starts to feel whole again, until a group of local girls preys on his past and makes fresh accusations, setting off a modern-day witch hunt.

10 P.M. (Fox News Channel) FOX NEWS REPORTING: THE CRISIS AT PENN STATE This investigation into the sexual-abuse scandal surrounding the university and Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach, includes interviews with Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania; Franco Harris, the former Penn State football player and Pittsburgh Steeler; and lawyers representing those saying that they are victims.

10 P.M. (Sundance) IN AMERICA (2002) Johnny (Paddy Considine), an Irish actor, and his wife, Sarah (Samantha Morton, who earned an Oscar nomination for best actress), try to start over in New York after the death of their young son in this modest but sincere drama from Jim Sheridan. Djimon Hounsou is Mateo (nominated for best supporting actor), a reclusive painter dying of what seems to be AIDS, whom Johnny and Sarah's daughters (Emma and Sarah Bolger) befriend. Mr. Sheridan (''My Left Foot'') wrote the film with his own two daughters; the three earned a nomination for best original screenplay. ''This movie, from moment to moment, feels small, almost anecdotal,'' Mr. Scott wrote in The Times. ''It is only afterward that, like Mr. Sheridan's other films, it starts to grow into something at once unassuming and in its own way grand.'' KATHRYN SHATTUCK